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Earlier this century, jatropha was hailed as a "miracle" biofuel. An unassuming shrubby tree native to Central America, it was hugely promoted as a high-yielding, drought-tolerant biofuel feedstock that might grow on degraded lands throughout Latin America, Africa and Asia.
A jatropha rush took place, with more than 900,000 hectares (2.2 million acres) planted by 2008. But the bubble burst. Low yields led to plantation failures almost all over. The after-effects of the jatropha crash was polluted by accusations of land grabbing, mismanagement, and overblown carbon reduction claims.
Today, some researchers continue pursuing the evasive promise of high-yielding jatropha. A return, they say, depends on cracking the yield problem and resolving the damaging land-use concerns linked with its original failure.
The sole staying big jatropha plantation remains in Ghana. The plantation owner declares high-yield domesticated varieties have been attained and a brand-new boom is at hand. But even if this resurgence falters, the world's experience of jatropha holds important lessons for any promising up-and-coming biofuel.
At the start of the 21st century, Jatropha curcas, an unassuming shrub-like tree belonging to Central America, was planted throughout the world. The rush to jatropha curcas was driven by its guarantee as a sustainable source of biofuel that might be grown on broken down, unfertile lands so as not to displace food crops. But inflated claims of high yields failed.

Now, after years of research and advancement, the sole remaining big plantation concentrated on growing jatropha remains in Ghana. And Singapore-based jOil, which owns that plantation, declares the jatropha resurgence is on.

"All those companies that failed, embraced a plug-and-play design of scouting for the wild ranges of jatropha. But to commercialize it, you require to domesticate it. This belongs of the procedure that was missed [throughout the boom]," jOil CEO Vasanth Subramanian informed Mongabay in an interview.

Having gained from the mistakes of previous failures, he says the oily plant could yet play a key role as a liquid biofuel feedstock, minimizing transportation carbon emissions at the global level. A brand-new boom could bring fringe benefits, with jatropha also a prospective source of fertilizers and even bioplastics.

But some scientists are hesitant, keeping in mind that jatropha has actually currently gone through one hype-and-fizzle cycle. They caution that if the plant is to reach complete capacity, then it is necessary to gain from past mistakes. During the first boom, jatropha plantations were obstructed not only by bad yields, however by land grabbing, logging, and social problems in nations where it was planted, including Ghana, where jOil operates.

Experts likewise suggest that jatropha's tale uses lessons for scientists and entrepreneurs exploring promising brand-new sources for liquid biofuels - which exist aplenty.

Miracle shrub, major bust

Jatropha's early 21st-century appeal originated from its guarantee as a "second-generation" biofuel, which are sourced from grasses, trees and other plants not stemmed from edible crops such as maize, soy or oil palm. Among its numerous supposed virtues was a capability to grow on abject or "minimal" lands; hence, it was declared it would never ever compete with food crops, so the theory went.

At that time, jatropha ticked all the boxes, states Alexandros Gasparatos, now at the University of Tokyo's Institute for Future Initiatives. "We had a crop that appeared miraculous; that can grow without excessive fertilizer, a lot of pesticides, or too much demand for water, that can be exported [as fuel] abroad, and does not contend with food because it is harmful."

Governments, international companies, financiers and business purchased into the hype, introducing initiatives to plant, or promise to plant, millions of hectares of jatropha. By 2008, plantations covered some 900,000 hectares (2.2 million acres) in Latin America, Africa and Asia, according to a market study got ready for WWF.

It didn't take wish for the mirage of the amazing biofuel tree to fade.

In 2009, a Buddies of the Earth report from Eswatini (still known at the time as Swaziland) warned that jatropha's high demands for land would certainly bring it into direct dispute with food crops. By 2011, a worldwide review kept in mind that "growing exceeded both clinical understanding of the crop's potential as well as an understanding of how the crop fits into existing rural economies and the degree to which it can thrive on minimal lands."

Projections approximated 4.7 million hectares (11.7 million acres) would be planted by 2010, and 12.8 million hectares (31.6 million acres) by 2015. However, only 1.19 million hectares (2.94 million acres) were growing by 2011. Projects and plantations started to stop working as expected yields declined to materialize. Jatropha might grow on abject lands and endure drought conditions, as claimed, but yields remained poor.

"In my opinion, this combination of speculative investment, export-oriented capacity, and prospective to grow under fairly poorer conditions, developed an extremely huge issue," resulting in "ignored yields that were going to be produced," Gasparatos says.

As jatropha plantations went from boom to bust, they were also plagued by ecological, social and economic problems, state specialists. Accusations of land grabs, the conversion of food crop lands, and cleaning of natural areas were reported.

Studies found that land-use change for jatropha in countries such as Brazil, Mexico and Tanzania caused a loss of biodiversity. A study from Mexico discovered the "carbon payback" of jatropha plantations due to involved forest loss varied in between two and 14 years, and "in some circumstances, the carbon debt might never be recovered." In India, production revealed carbon advantages, but the use of fertilizers resulted in increases of soil and water "acidification, ecotoxicity, eutrophication."

"If you take a look at many of the plantations in Ghana, they claim that the jatropha produced was located on marginal land, however the idea of marginal land is very elusive," explains Abubakari Ahmed, a speaker at the University for Development Studies, Ghana. He studied the ramifications of jatropha plantations in the country over numerous years, and found that a lax meaning of "limited" meant that presumptions that the land co-opted for jatropha plantations had been lying untouched and unused was often illusory.

"Marginal to whom?" he asks. "The truth that ... presently nobody is using [land] for farming does not suggest that nobody is utilizing it [for other purposes] There are a great deal of nature-based incomes on those landscapes that you might not always see from satellite images."

Learning from jatropha

There are key lessons to be found out from the experience with jatropha, say experts, which should be hearkened when thinking about other auspicious second-generation biofuels.

"There was a boom [in financial investment], however unfortunately not of research study, and action was taken based on supposed benefits of jatropha," states Bart Muys, a professor in the Division of Forest, Nature and Landscape at the University of Leuven, Belgium. In 2014, as the jatropha buzz was unwinding, Muys and associates published a paper pointing out essential lessons.

Fundamentally, he explains, there was a lack of understanding about the plant itself and its needs. This important requirement for in advance research could be used to other possible biofuel crops, he states. Last year, for example, his team released a paper examining the yields of pongamia (Millettia pinnata), a "fast-growing, leguminous and multipurpose tree types" with biofuel pledge.

Like jatropha, pongamia can be grown on abject and minimal land. But Muys's research showed yields to be extremely variable, contrary to other reports. The group concluded that "pongamia still can not be considered a considerable and stable source of biofuel feedstock due to continuing knowledge spaces." Use of such cautionary data might avoid wasteful financial speculation and negligent land conversion for new biofuels.

"There are other very appealing trees or plants that could serve as a fuel or a biomass manufacturer," Muys says. "We wished to prevent [them going] in the same direction of early buzz and stop working, like jatropha."

Gasparatos highlights essential requirements that must be fulfilled before continuing with new biofuel plantations: high yields must be opened, inputs to reach those yields comprehended, and an all set market should be readily available.

"Basically, the crop needs to be domesticated, or [clinical understanding] at a level that we understand how it is grown," Gasparatos says. Jatropha "was virtually undomesticated when it was promoted, which was so unusual."

How biofuel lands are obtained is likewise key, says Ahmed. Based on experiences in Ghana where communally used lands were purchased for production, authorities must guarantee that "standards are put in place to check how large-scale land acquisitions will be done and documented in order to decrease a few of the problems we observed."

A jatropha return?

Despite all these difficulties, some researchers still think that under the best conditions, jatropha might be an important biofuel solution - especially for the difficult-to-decarbonize transportation sector "accountable for around one quarter of greenhouse gas emissions."

"I believe jatropha has some potential, but it needs to be the best product, grown in the ideal location, and so on," Muys said.

Mohammad Alherbawi, a postdoctoral research study fellow at Qatar's Hamad Bin Khalifa University, continues holding out hope for jatropha. He sees it as a way that Qatar may lower airline carbon emissions. According to his quotes, its usage as a jet fuel could lead to about a 40% decrease of "cradle to grave" emissions.

Alherbawi's team is performing continuous field studies to boost jatropha yields by fertilizing crops with sewage sludge. As an included advantage, he envisages a jatropha green belt spanning 20,000 hectares (almost 50,000 acres) in Qatar. "The application of the green belt can actually improve the soil and farming lands, and safeguard them against any more wear and tear triggered by dust storms," he states.

But the Qatar job's success still depends upon numerous aspects, not least the capability to acquire quality yields from the tree. Another crucial step, Alherbawi discusses, is scaling up production innovation that utilizes the whole of the jatropha fruit to increase processing efficiency.

Back in Ghana, jOil is presently handling more than 1,300 hectares (1,830 acres) of jatropha, and growing a pilot plot on 300 hectares (740 acres) working with more than 400 farmers. Subramanian describes that years of research study and advancement have resulted in varieties of jatropha that can now accomplish the high yields that were doing not have more than a years earlier.

"We had the ability to speed up the yield cycle, improve the yield range and boost the fruit-bearing capacity of the tree," Subramanian states. In essence, he states, the tree is now domesticated. "Our first project is to broaden our jatropha plantation to 20,000 hectares."

Biofuels aren't the only application JOil is looking at. The fruit and its by-products could be a source of fertilizer, bio-candle wax, a charcoal alternative (essential in Africa where much wood is still burned for cooking), and even bioplastics.

But it is the transportation sector that still beckons as the ideal biofuels application, according to Subramanian. "The biofuels story has once again reopened with the energy transition drive for oil companies and bio-refiners - [driven by] the look for alternative fuels that would be emission friendly."

A total jatropha life-cycle evaluation has yet to be finished, however he believes that cradle-to-grave greenhouse gas emissions related to the oily plant will be "competitive ... These two aspects - that it is technically suitable, and the carbon sequestration - makes it a really strong prospect for adoption for ... sustainable air travel," he states. "We believe any such expansion will happen, [by clarifying] the meaning of degraded land, [enabling] no competition with food crops, nor in any way endangering food security of any nation."

Where next for jatropha?

Whether jatropha can really be carbon neutral, environment-friendly and socially responsible depends upon complicated elements, including where and how it's grown - whether, for example, its production design is based in smallholder farms versus industrial-scale plantations, state specialists. Then there's the irritating problem of attaining high yields.

Earlier this year, the Bolivian government announced its objective to pursue jatropha plantations in the Gran Chaco biome, part of a national biofuels press that has stirred dispute over prospective effects. The Gran Chaco's dry forest biome is already in deep problem, having been greatly deforested by aggressive agribusiness practices.

Many past plantations in Ghana, cautions Ahmed, transformed dry savanna woodland, which ended up being troublesome for carbon accounting. "The net carbon was typically negative in most of the jatropha sites, because the carbon sequestration of jatropha can not be compared to that of a shea tree," he discusses.

Other scientists chronicle the "capacity of Jatropha curcas as an environmentally benign biodiesel feedstock" in Malaysia, Indonesia and India. But still other researchers remain skeptical of the environmental viability of second-generation biofuels. "If Mexico promotes biofuels, such as the exploitation of jatropha, the rebound is that it perhaps becomes so successful, that we will have a great deal of associated land-use modification," states Daniel Itzamna Avila-Ortega, co-founder of the Mexican Center of Industrial Ecology and a Ph.D. student with the Stockholm Resilience Centre; he has actually carried out research on the possibilities of jatropha contributing to a circular economy in Mexico.

Avila-Ortega mentions previous land-use issues related to expansion of various crops, including oil palm, sugarcane and avocado: "Our law enforcement is so weak that it can not manage the economic sector doing whatever they desire, in terms of producing environmental problems."

Researchers in Mexico are presently checking out jatropha-based livestock feed as an affordable and sustainable replacement for grain. Such uses might be well matched to regional contexts, Avila-Ortega concurs, though he remains worried about prospective ecological expenses.

He suggests restricting jatropha expansion in Mexico to make it a "crop that conquers land," growing it just in really poor soils in requirement of restoration. "Jatropha might be among those plants that can grow in very sterilized wastelands," he discusses. "That's the only method I would ever promote it in Mexico - as part of a forest healing method for wastelands. Otherwise, the associated issues are greater than the potential advantages."

Jatropha's global future stays uncertain. And its prospective as a tool in the fight versus climate change can only be unlocked, say many experts, by preventing the list of problems associated with its first boom.

Will jatropha tasks that sputtered to a stop in the early 2000s be fired back up again? Subramanian believes its function as a sustainable biofuel is "impending" and that the resurgence is on. "We have strong interest from the energy industry now," he states, "to team up with us to develop and broaden the supply chain of jatropha."

Banner image: Jatropha curcas trees in Hawai'i. Image by Forest and Kim Starr through Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

A liquid biofuels guide: Carbon-cutting hopes vs. real-world impacts

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